This year CppCon is increasing the number of Open Content sessions. In addition to the early morning and evening sessions offered last year, we’ll also be offering Open Content session over the lunch break.

Open Content is just that, open! Attendees and regular program speakers alike can propose sessions on anything that interests them. These might feature a single facilitator leading a room through an exercise, activity or demo, a panel of 3-5 people taking questions from the room, a “hackathon” on a specific project, or an open conversation among the whole room. The projector is available for slides or note taking.

Open Content is designed for flexibility so that a “Birds of a Feather” talk may be proposed even after the conference has begun. A speaker who gets a lot of post-talk questions may agree to host a Q&A session in the Open Content time. An attendee inspired by a session may host a session to explore a topic further or start on a group implementation of something.

To propose a session, simply email open-content@cppcon.org and tell us the title, description, and speaker(s)/moderators(s). If you have time constraints such as “after a specific session” or “not on the same day as a specific session” let us know in the email. (For example, someone who will be grilled at Grill The Committee on Monday can’t do an open session Monday evening.)

These sessions will be open in another way too – Open Content does not require conference registration. That’s right, everyone who is in the area is welcome to come and join us for all the evening/lunch sessions, including proposing or leading a session. This is part of our goal to be an inclusive conference for the entire C++ community.

For now, please email your submissions as soon as you can so that our planning work can get underway. See you in Bellevue!

CppCon is the annual, week-long face-to-face gathering for the entire C++ community. The conference is organized by the C++ community for the community and so we invite you to present.

Have you learned something interesting about C++, maybe a new technique possible in C++11/14? Or perhaps you have implemented something cool related to C++, maybe a new C++ library? If so, consider sharing it with other C++ enthusiasts by giving a talk at CppCon 2015. Submissions deadline is May 22 with decisions sent by June 19. For topic ideas, possible formats, and submission instructions, see the Submissions page.

As part of getting ready to come to CppCon 2014, please consider presenting a Lightning Talk. All attendees (as well as anyone nearby who is taking advantage of the free evening content without registering) are eligible to present a 5 or 15 minute session on Tuesday evening. While the first Call for Lightning Talks has more details on what we’re looking for, we’re open to talks from new speakers, from experienced speakers, from those who work mainly in another language and are visiting C++, from those who work in C++ all the time – everyone! If there’s one tool you just love using, one technique or best practice you’d like to share with others, or one thing you think is pretty darn funny, please see if you can make it into a 5 or 15 minute talk and share it Tuesday evening. There will be a projector and there will be an audience so why not “give it a go” and see what happens?

We’ll be selecting the 8 sessions on Monday, Day 1 of the conference. Just email open-content@cppcon.org and tell us what you want to talk about, what length you need and a little bit about yourself – one sentence is fine. Your topic should be relevant to CppCon attendees but doesn’t need to be about C++ – we’d love to see “Why C++ developers should also know [language]” for example. Even if you don’t plan to submit, plan to attend, it’s sure to be fun!